Is there a perfectionist/workaholic ethic in the gay community?

[jsmurf]

One would think that all the hurdles, obstacles and subtle discrimination gay people must overcome serve to harden "our" collective determination to prove ourselves better than everyone else. Is this so?

[prism]

A surprising amount of celebrities and famous historical figures (authors, inventors, scientists, musicians, etc.) were openly homosexual, so I can't even imagine how many more there were. Any type of adversity can make a person stronger, it just depends on how you deal with it. Like everything else, it depends on the person. I am both a workaholic and a perfectionist, but I don't think it has much to do with my sexuality.
However, I will say that being bullied has made me a stronger person. Some people didn't like me, some people did, so I learned to be the type of person that I liked.

[Chip]

Originally Posted by jsmurf

One would think that all the hurdles, obstacles and subtle discrimination gay people must overcome serve to harden "our" collective determination to prove ourselves better than everyone else. Is this so?

There is a strong perfectionist/workaholic ethic in the gay community, but not for the reasons you suspect.

Perfectionism and workaholism are very strongly correlated with shame, in different ways. And most LGBT people have a substantially larger amount of shame than our heterosexual cohorts, simply because we are subjected to so many homophobic or discriminatory messages growing up.

First, as you said, perfectionists, when trying to achieve perfection, are trying to prove ourselves worthy, in an attempt to offset the "I'm not good enough" message being fed by the shame. But we never (or almost never) actually achieve perfection, so when we fall short, instead of going "Oh, well, that's OK, we redouble our efforts to be perfect... and when we fail again, unconsciously, it feeds into the shame... "I'm still not good enough"... and it is a continuing cycle.

Workaholism has some roots in the same place as the shame, but often serves as a means of numbing; if we focus our efforts on work, we can distract ourselves from the feelings that might come up if we simply relaxed and weren't doing anything to occupy our time. In that way, workaholism is really not much different, in terms of its numbing effect, from drugs, alcohol, overeating, excessive exercise, or any of the other numbing behaviors people use to escape from feelings (usually feelings of shame.)

There was a book written in the early-mid 1980s, "The Corporate Closet", that talked in depth about the effects of being in the closet on performance in the corporate environment. It was too early for much detailed discussion of how shame drove the behaviors, and the book is obviously dated now, but it remains as a fascinating view of how gay men (sadly, almost exclusively men) often quickly climbed the corporate ladder due to their overperformance at work.

Certainly, being driven toward healthy striving and focusing on doing a good job is good and healthy; perfectionism and workaholism is not. Working on one's shame, and understanding and honoring boundaries within oneself are the ways we work toward having a reasonable and healthy viewpoint on work and performance, so that we can achieve balance.

If anything, I'm lazy and unproductive in my work life... I live by "If it's close enough, it's good enough."
I wouldn't really suspect much of a correlation to begin with, really. I think the obstacles and hurdles of being gay wouldn't delve into personality that much. Maybe I'm the only one that thinks that.

[Jared]

I would say that I'm definitely a perfectionist and a workaholic. I've always poured myself into my school work, striving for perfect grades and to get into a prestigious college. I definitely feel the need to prove my worth and I've tried to do that through academics. I don't think that this a healthy way to live, in the last year or so it's finally started to get to me, my already bad anxiety kicked into overdrive, along with the "I'm not good enough" thoughts and it hasn't been fun. I think than perfectionism is common in gays since we're trying to prove that we're as good or better than others to make up for self worth problems.

[SFSorrow]

A more recent book that covers the same kind of thing is 'The velvet rage' by Alan Down, he discusses at some length how many gay men strive to be exceptionally successful and perfectionist in their working lives to compensate for the shame they felt growing up.

Doesn't seem to have affected me.

[Pret Allez]

Maybe, but I don't think so.

Another time to consider is that minorities often feel what's called the "burden of representation." Negative things we do are blamed on the whole group, and so we feel the need to be above average members of our group to prove that we are productive members of society.

This produces a high level of stress.